[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 66 (Thursday, May 10, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H2572-H2573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               BARBARISM

  (Mr. HIMES asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I have watched saddened as this House led by 
the Republican majority has fought to gut those things that made and 
that will make this country great.
  I'm reading a history of the U.S. House of Representatives right now, 
and early in that history, this body--when this Nation was barely yet 
born--pulled together the resources to build the Erie Canal, coming 
together to do great things that benefited the Nation. The list of 
those things goes on and on: the Louisiana Purchase, public education, 
land grant colleges, the GI Bill. I could go on for a very long time.
  Today, the Republican majority says to transportation and 
infrastructure, which are key to our businesses, they say kill it; to 
medical research, kill it; to education, kill it. Mr. Speaker, that 
instinct is utterly inconsistent with who we have always been as a 
country and why we are great and powerful and ultimately economically 
prosperous. It

[[Page H2573]]

is not stewardship. It is not governance. It is barbarism.

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